Nelson scores hat trick as Sound Tigers win penalty-fest

Michael Fornabaio

Updated 12:46 am, Sunday, February 3, 2013

BRIDGEPORT -- One Norfolk Admirals or Bridgeport Sound Tigers player or another filed to the penalty box. Not even two-thirds of Saturday's game was played at full strength.

The Sound Tigers needed their whole bench to win 4-1 at Webster Bank Arena, though their top line scored all four goals -- Brock Nelson earned his first professional hat trick -- and goalie Kevin Poulin made 26 saves.

"I'd planned (to use players in different roles) over the weekend knowing we were coming off the all-star break, not getting a lot of practice," Bridgeport coach Scott Pellerin said. "Getting back into it with three (games in three nights), I knew we had to use the whole bench."

That gave the likes of Greenwich's Sean Backman more power-play and penalty-kill time. Chad Costello got some power-play time. They might not have seen as much ice time otherwise.

They contributed to a strong special-teams effort for Bridgeport on a night when referee Jon McIsaac awarded 13 power plays.

The penalty kill, especially, had allowed 15 goals in 39 tries coming in. Norfolk went just 1-for-7 Saturday, scoring only at the end of a five-on-three.

"We were communicating with each other," Nelson said. "Poulin was great behind us. He gave us a lot of confidence. He was going to stop the puck wherever they shot from."

Attendance was 4,632.

McIsaac, who gave each team a pair of five-on-threes, couldn't have waved off the deciding power play if he wanted to: Rod Pelley flipped a puck into the crowd from his own zone, an automatic delay-of-game minor.

Late in the penalty, Matt Donovan knocked a Norfolk player's discarded stick out of the way (to the Admirals' bench's apparent dismay) and got the puck to Nelson to Igor Bobkov's left. Nelson fired a shot off Bobkov's right pad and in to make it 2-1.

Nelson hadn't scored since Dec. 14, the night he suffered a broken jaw in Norfolk, Va., when a puck hit him in the face and kept him out until Jan. 11. He had played nine games, collecting just three assists.

"We had talked on the radio about how secondary scoring had kept us going, but it was nice to see Brock have a great game, get a hat trick," Pellerin said.

Nelson's linemate, Nino Niederreiter, didn't have a point in six previous games after not going longer than three games without at least an assist through the first half of the season.

He deflected in Mike Halmo's shot, his 20th goal, to make it 3-1. Nelson added an empty-netter.

Peter Holland scored Norfolk's goal on a rebound in the first period. Nelson answered 37 seconds into the second period after Ty Wishart's shot was blocked.